(a) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a hydrogen exhaust apparatus for a fuel cell vehicle, and more particularly, to an apparatus for safely discharging hydrogen that has permeated and is leaking from a fuel tank of a fuel cell vehicle.
(b) Background
In general, technology for applying hydrogen energy to a vehicle may provide considerable social benefits and directly contribution to an increased market size by reducing the potential amount of CO2 produced, and facilitating non-petroleum dependence. Furthermore, utilizing hydrogen energy in a vehicle may improve industrial competitiveness.
However, hydrogen presents potential dangers concerning storage and transport. For example, the volume energy density of hydrogen is merely 1/3,000 of gasoline. Typically, there are limited places within a vehicle to mount the hydrogen transport container. Utilizing hydrogen fuel for a fuel cell vehicle makes the requirement that the hydrogen be safely and compactly made, transported, and stored very important. Namely, technology for securing safety, compactly transporting and storing hydrogen is required. Currently, in this application a light and high interior pressure tank has been used.
Generally, a fuel cell vehicle using hydrogen as fuel is a vehicle which drives a motor by utilizing the charge generated by reacting the hydrogen and the oxygen, and thereby generates momentum utilizing the driving of the motor. A hydrogen storage system is mounted within the fuel cell vehicle. Conventionally, the hydrogen storage systems having the highest commercialized performance have a high pressure tolerance of 700 bars. To store the high-pressure hydrogen of the fuel cell vehicle, a tank adopting a carbon composite has been used. Typically, tanks are classified into type 3 or type 4 according to the composition of the liner materials.
Typically, the type 4 tank utilizes a plastic liner, resulting in a hydrogen transmission problem. For example, European regulations requires that the hydrogen permeation amount cannot exceed 6 cc/L/. In other words, the total amount of hydrogen discharged to the air is regulated thereby limiting the amount of hydrogen permeating the plastic liner that is discharged to the air from the type 4 tank. However, it is difficult to quantitatively measure the amount of hydrogen discharged to the air, and the hydrogen discharged to the air may create a safety concern.
The above information disclosed in this section is merely for enhancement of the understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.